


don't get cut on my edges

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, M/M, Swearing, i mean its ronan, is it rlly a coincidence that pynch sounds like punch, mY RAVEN BOYS, pynch - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 06:01:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5732005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>they're all a little bit in love with each other, from the very beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't get cut on my edges

They were unknowable.

The dirt beneath his fingernails, the bruises that ghosted his face – they were always there, buried beneath his skin, but seeing them, they were cutting his skin for the first time. Richard Gansey the III, power furled into him, a vision unfurling in his gaze, the boy who chased lost kings and myths. Ronan Lynch, a knife held between his teeth, a gun in his gaze, the boy who snarled at nighttime terrors.

He met Ronan first. It was strange when he would for so long feel like a being collected by Gansey, another charity case he took in (a demon of a boy, a ghost of a boy – and was he next?), but it was Ronan. It was Latin class, and the Henrietta heat had bled into every crevice of the school, his secondhand uniform sticking to him. And there it was in dark marker, the beginning of them, prophesied against the smudged white of the whiteboard.  

_Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish._

It stuck to him for a moment how different their names were. He didn’t expect Ronan to be there, when the only reason he seemed to come was to write increasingly rude jokes in Latin. It was his own private challenge to translate them in the beginning of class, his own private warm-up. Except there was a joke today which meant there was a Ronan today. His gaze found him out, sprawled back, collar open and tie tied as monstrously as possible.

Adam touched his own neat tie before he quietly settled down in the seat next to him. When attendance came about, there was no Gansey. Worry pricked him. The only other reason Ronan ever seemed to be there was because of Gansey, and no Gansey meant no one to ensure he did any work. “Adam Parrish,” he said, holding out his hand. There was no accent.

Ronan looked like he was tempted to spit in the hand. He grabbed it, and it felt more like an earthquake than a shake. “I’ll do my part,” he said, gaze burning into Adam’s like he already knew what Adam had been thinking moments before. “No need to fucking panic, Parrish.”

“I’m not, Lynch,” he said, and he began his half of the translation. Ronan Lynch put in his earbuds and did nothing.

Adam panicked.

But when next class came around, his translation was impeccable, and there was no need to panic.

It was another two months before he met Gansey though. By that time, the project was all but gone from his mind. There was no time to think about snake smiles when his life was school then work then school then (home) then again and again.

“Do you need help?”

He had hesitated, but it felt wrong not to offer, even to someone like Richard Gansey who was old and young at once. His car was stopped along the side of the road, and Gansey was thumbing his phone. “No, I have a phone, but thank you.” He flashed a powerful, polite smile.

Adam should have rode on. Instead he said, “I’m a mechanic.”

This time Gansey held his gaze. “Can you show me?” Some of Gansey was lost, and there was someone else, a scholar, a student, someone eager to learn.

“I can take a look,” he shrugged a shoulder, pushing down the stop on his bike with his foot before he took the short few steps to the car. It took twenty minutes, but the engine was running again, and Gansey was giving him a look he couldn’t decipher.

“Do you need a ride?” asked Gansey. “I have room for the bike in the trunk.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Adam was a little sorry to think this was the end. Gansey would go and become a Senator or a President, and Adam would tell the story, and everyone would laugh.

The story didn’t go like that. “What do you know of Welsh kings?” Gansey asked.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Adam Parrish was Gansey’s new charity case, and three had become four.

There was nothing Ronan could do about it. He had been voted out. He didn’t want to call it a meeting, but hell, that was what it was. “So,” Noah asked, fiddling with a thread on the sofa in Monmouth. “We’re letting Adam join? I like Adam if we do.”

“We’re not teenage girls,” Ronan sneered, but he had said ‘we’ like they were. “This isn’t a club.”

“Okay,” Noah said with a knowing look.

“I like Adam,” declared Gansey, a little grandly. “He had some interesting insights to the ley line.” That was code for Adam not immediately dismissing the notion of sleeping kings and magic.

“Obviously that’s all it fucking takes nowadays,” Ronan wanted to throw something.

“Ronan,” said Gansey.

“He’s funny too,” Noah softly punched the air out like he was fist-bumping an invisible Adam Parrish.

Ronan didn’t want more of them. Noah he had little to no protests about. He had just appeared, and he was here and then not here. He settled into their life like fine Henrietta dust, but this was different. Adam wasn’t going to settle.

“You don’t like him?” Gansey’s voice was even, but there was a hint of anxiety.

He wanted to enjoy the power he held over the decision (even though they weren’t a goddamn bunch of teenage girls), but he couldn’t, not with Gansey looking at him like that. “Fuck it, he’s in,” he sighed, leaning back. So, he hadn’t been exactly outvoted, but the look Gansey got in his eyes was about the same thing.

They clashed immediately. Ronan liked it. Of course he did. There was nothing he liked better than a fight, than fists hooking in and the slam of bodies, of adrenaline burning away in his lungs. Their words were fists, and Adam was the strangest opponent.  Sometimes he fought back, sometimes he was quiet as that settling Henrietta dust.

And.

Against.

His.

Will.

They became fucking friends.

It wasn’t as if Ronan hadn’t been aware of Adam before then. He was Ronan Lynch, and he was always aware. He had noticed the threadbare sweaters tucked over the secondhand uniform, the quiet studiousness, the rusted bike. It just hadn’t mattered, not in Roman’s world of very few people. Except now he did, and now he noticed everything.

“Trip again?” He drawled from the backseat of the car (banished as a result of abuse of radio; Noah was delighted at getting shotgun) as Gansey slowed by the curb. Bruises. Again.

“I work in a factory,” said Adam steadily. “It’s not easy work, but I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“I’ve punched people,” began Ronan.

“I’ve noticed.”

He ignored the dry humor. “And I know what it looks like when I’m done. Looks like your pretty face, Parrish, in case you didn’t get my meaning.”

“Guys,” said Gansey, but his grip on the steering wheel was tight as he thought over what Ronan had said. He was smart, but he was oblivious. He saw magic and sleeping kings, but he didn’t see the dirty, gritty realities of the world until someone peeled away the rug. He couldn’t see the bloodstains in the bathroom.

“I tripped,” Adam said.

“We all trip,” said Noah like he was saying something else, something kinder.

Ronan had no patience for it. A double-edged sword had no time for double meanings. “It’s not always about pity and pride, Parrish.” Pity. Pride. Parrish. It fit. “Who’s fucking punching you?”

This was when Gansey would interrupt, but he didn’t because Ronan was right.

Adam’s hands stiffened at his side. This was pride. Before he said anything, Noah said, quiet, “I – we – just want you to be okay.”

“I am okay,” said Adam to all of them.

“I wonder if maybe you’re not,” Gansey said, testing the waters.

“I’m not feeling ley lines today,” he said. So Adam was dropped off on his street (he never allowed them any closer), and Ronan was annoyed. It was all great for him to be voted in, but he was guarded. He wasn’t one of them, not yet. Not that he could talk. He dreamed things into being.

Ronan asked Kavinsky. “Russian,” he greeted.

“Irish,” Kavinsky leaned over the side of his car, gaze stroking up and down Ronan’s BMW. His heart jolted, and a warmth spread over him. No, it wasn’t warmth. It was fire, and it burned.

“I won last week,” he said. “I want my prize.” Some people did, but they both knew Ronan wanted nothing but the thrill, but the alcohol in his veins, but the feeling of dying and still living.

Kavinsky let out a hoarse laugh. “What could you want?”

“Parrish,” he said. “Who’s beating him up?”

Surely Kavinsky, dealer of nighttime secrets and street races, would know. There was a silence as Kavinsky thought about it before he answered, smoke curling out of his lips with the answer. “None of my crew’s beating up your boyfriend, Lynch. You know the answer, asshole.” The swear was almost sweet.

“I don’t,” Ronan said, and he didn’t.

“His fucking father,” Kavinsky laughed, and he drove off, his laughter and words burning into him.

He was oblivious too in some ways. Like Gansey was, he never looked at fathers and thought darkness and bruises. He saw dreams, and he had never thought. He had never thought. Ronan drove back to Monmouth and thought about telling Gansey, but he didn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

The routine had gotten more difficult, but that was because it had stopped being a routine. There was life in it now. There were friends. There was Gansey with his hands that itched for knowledge and his politician smile. There was Noah with his smudgy face and knowing gazes. There was Ronan with his fast car and bad music.

Friends.

He couldn’t keep everything separate forever, and he should have known that he should have said no when Ronan offered to drop him off. With the Pig in repairs, they had used Ronan’s car for the day. Adam, sleep heavy on his eyelids, had said yes, but when they got on his street, Ronan didn’t just pause. “Where’s your _house_?” Ronan asked in a voice that suggested he didn’t think it counted as a house.

“I told you it wasn’t a trailer.” Adam wasn’t going to unearth that argument so late at night. “Here’s fine.”

“You’re not walking home this late, man,” said Ronan, unmoved.

“It’s almost eleven,” Gansey agreed.

Shock swept over him. He had been so careful. How did time slip by like this? If he had said as much, Gansey would only brighten and think it must have been the ley lines. It wasn’t.  It was this and them. “I’m sure I can manage a walk home if you’re going to street race every week.”

“ _Ronan_ ,” said Gansey. “You said you stopped.”

“I did stop,” said Ronan. “Kavinsky’s out of town.” He shook his head. “Your house, Parrish. I don’t have all night.”

He couldn’t stall it forever. He relented and murmured out his address, but Ronan caught it of course. “Fuck, that’s two streets away,” he glanced at Gansey for confirmation who would know considering he was building a model of Henrietta.

“It is,” said Gansey, glancing at Adam.

A sense of growing fear and anticipation grew as they neared closer to his home, passing the same rusted mailboxes and rose bushes he always passed. Relief flushed over him when he realized that his father wasn’t home. He had gotten lucky. “Thanks,” said Adam, and he thrust himself out.

Within a week though, he realized it hadn’t gone forgotten. It had been _discussed_. Adam loathed the idea of being discussed, even though he knew they all did it, He hated the idea of being picked apart like that. “Ronan told me,” Gansey admitted straight-forward. “Your father, Adam?”

“I – “ He didn’t know how to lie now that he was staring at the truth. “I don’t remember telling Lynch anything,” he said, glare setting on Ronan. Noah was nowhere to be found.

“Didn’t have to,” he said.

“We could turn him in,” said Gansey in a hopeless kind of way. He knew Adam would never say yes to that.

What Adam wanted was a fight, not a solution. “No,” he said, the fight burning up in him.

“I could teach you how to fight,” said Ronan, not looking up from his phone when he offered. He didn’t usually offer Adam things.

Adam imagined it. Fighting back. It was a daydream. “It would only make things worst.”

“You can move in here,” said Gansey.

“No,” he said at once. Never that. He left Monmouth, and Ronan followed him, crossed arms and leaning against the house.

“Do it,” Ronan said.

Adam froze. “What would you know? Your father’s dead.” It was a calculated shot.

Ronan stiffened. “And you’re a child abuse victim.”

Anger swelled in him. “At least I’m doing something about it. At least I’m not just drinking all my problems away.”

“Doing something?” Ronan scoffed. “Do you _like_ it, Parrish? Why the hell else can’t you just fucking take one of our offers?”

It wasn’t taking. It was being given. He didn’t say as much before Ronan pressed up closer. “Oh, I forgot,” snarled Ronan. “Pity and pride, isn’t it, Parrish?”

He did it. His hands fell out before him, and he shoved Ronan. It wasn’t like him to fight Ronan physically, not when he knew he would lose. Only his anger burned through every part of him, and it was all he could feel, boiling in his chest, in his ribs. “Fuck you, Lynch.”

Ronan shoved him back, just as hard. “Fuck me, huh?” He asked, softly and viciously.

Adam blindly swung, but Ronan caught it. “Thumb tucked in,” he said, and it hit him.

“Fuck,” he let his hands fall. He was going to hit someone. He was going to hit someone he cared for.

“Parrish, don’t,” said Ronan, one hand gripping his shoulder. “I don’t give a fuck. You’d lose anyways.”

Adam managed a choked laugh. “Try me.”

 

* * *

 

 

Nightmares. Ronan was used to them. Sometimes he woke up with a weapon in his hands. Sometimes he woke up with fear thrumming through his veins. This time though, he woke up with blood sticking to his wrists, and it was real, fuck, and it hurt. He didn’t know what to do for that hot instant, and the door was shoved open, and it was Gansey and Noah.

“Fuck,” said Gansey, “fuck.”

All Ronan could think of the dream. He couldn’t remember the monster’s face. He remembered its claws though, a terror that could dig through his flesh, that tried to bite at his chest. It wanted to chew him up and spit it out. Maybe it was Ronan Lynch.

“ – he’s bleeding, yes, by the Academy, as soon as you can – “

Gansey’s voice on the phone was distant, and Noah was gone. The pain was burning and immediate. The bed sheets were sticky with sweat. His head spun, and he wanted to welcome the darkness.  Might as fucking well.

And so the darkness came.

But it left again, and he woke up in a hospital, the smell of cleanness and metal. He hated hospitals. Gansey was asleep in the chair next to him, and there was no Noah or Adam. There was Matthew though. No Declan.

No, Matthew was asleep though. He sat up, and there was Adam by the door, knocking once on the doorway before he stepped in. “Hi.”

“Didn’t think you were here,” he said as if they weren’t in a hospital.

“I left. And then I came back.” His lips twisted, and Ronan knew there was more to it. He was just too fucking exhausted to care.

“Right,” he said.

“I didn’t think you would,” Adam said, eyes falling down to his wrist.

“Don’t talk to them, talk to me,” said Ronan.

“I didn’t think you would really want to die.”

Ronan said, “I don’t.” He glanced down at his hand. “You can leave, Parrish. I know you don’t want to be here.”

“No,” said Adam, earnest. “I want to be with you. I just – it’s three in the morning.” His fear of being caught out of bed went unsaid.

“Go,” said Ronan. He would wave his hands imperiously if he could.

Adam hesitated before he said his goodbye. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Matthew woke up just after Adam left. “I thought – “ He murmured, shaking his head, and this was why he couldn’t die. He couldn’t imagine Matthew anything less of alive, those Irish curls and his warm smile. His voice. No, he couldn’t and wouldn’t die. Ronan couldn’t imagine wanting it.

“I’m fine,” he said, voice rough. “Where’s Declan?”

“Outside,” Matthew said. So he was here, after all. “Took a walk to clear his head.”

“Bring him please,” said Ronan. It wasn’t that he wanted to see Declan. He didn’t. He needed to talk to Gansey, and when Matthew left, he said Gansey’s name.

He awoke. “Ronan,” he said, gaze a little wide, a little desperate. “You wanted to die.”

“I was high,” said Ronan. “I don’t want to die.” A lie, a lie. He couldn’t tell the truth though.

“Promise me,” Gansey grasped his shoulder, hands trembling.

Ronan would be more careful. He would take more caution. He would never see his friends like this again.

“I promise.”

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> pynch me @ glentower on tumblr  
> get it


End file.
